Every year, dozens of children in the United States of America tragically pass away due to what is colloquially referred to as “hot car seat deaths,” or situations where a child is left in a vehicle for an extended period of time and are unable to escape. Hot car seat deaths typically occur in situations where a caregiver forgets to remove a child from a car seat and leaves the child (typically ranging from 0 to 3 or 4 years old, though that is an example only) unattended in a car with the engine off.
In these situations, temperatures in cars can rise rapidly due to the greenhouse effect within the cabin of the car, for example on the order of tens of degrees Fahrenheit within half an hour. Young children's nervous systems are less developed for proper thermoregulation, and thus are more susceptible to swings in temperatures including dramatic increases in heat. As the heat rapidly increases, hyperthermia can set in on a young child quickly, even within 15 minutes in some cases.
Current known approaches attempt to resolve this problem by providing a system in vehicles that sound an audible alarm when weight is sensed in a rear seat region, i.e., reminding the driver (or other passenger) to check the rear seat prior to exiting the vehicle. But this approach is still deficient; there is a chance for false positives if something besides a child is placed on the rear seat region. Audible alarms within the vehicle itself could be ignored, misunderstood, drowned out, etc., thus failing to provide the notification necessary to the caregiver. Further, these approaches do nothing to ameliorate the rising temperature of the vehicle cabin until the child is rescued.
Accordingly, the potential remains for improvements that facilitate improved detection of children in a vehicle cabin in a dangerous situation, mitigation of temperature increases of the young child during the dangerous situation, and notification of caregivers and/or emergency responders before too much time has passed.